Nursing Education

[Dylan Tonne]

Hello! Currently i'm apart of the United States Marine Corps and i have 4 years to serve. Considering my job will be busy i will most likely not have enough time to go to college while active duty. I've always considered becoming a nurse but i joined the military for education financial security and for other reasons as well. My question would be what kind of subjects could i study while in, whether it be through books or online, that would give me an understanding of things for when i take my prerequisites for nursing school in college after i leave the military?

[Berazil, BSN, RN]

Thank you for service Dylan. I'm also active duty (Navy) but I'm getting out in a few days and I plan on starting nursing school next spring. You will have to get nursing pre reqs out of the way, some of the subjects will help you are human anatomy, physiology, chemistry, mathematics, English composition.

Make sure you use the military tuition assistance. I took all my nursing pre req while on active duty and the Navy paid for all of it. I served on an anphibiuos ship so Marines deployed with us. During deployments we had college instructors aboard the ship so sailors and marines could take college classes. Subjects like mathematics, history, english. The best time to actually take college classes for active duty personnel is when we come back from deployment at least for Navy. Make sure you are on the look out for opportunities to take college classes while you are in, take as many credits as you can. You can use your GI Bill to pay for school after you get out. I live in Wisconsin and the state has it's own GI Bill for prior military. So I get one degree paid by Navy and an additional one paid by the State of Wisconsin

Good luck to you!

[anothervietguy, ADN, RN]

Thank you for your service. Like the other user have said, you should take the advantage of tuition assistance while you are on active duty. There are a lot of colleges that offer classes on military base and they are very flexible with the class schedules. Another option that you can look into is the CLEP program. It is completely free. Go to the website Modern States – Freshman Year for Free and you can take many college freshman classes for free. They will provide you with free books and resources to pass the test. The DOD will pay for your CLEP exams so you don't have to spend a dime on it. In that way, you can knock out all of the general classes before you have to take the prerequisite classes for the nursing program. For the prerequisite classes, you can take it online. Just make sure that the online school is regionally accredited and the nursing school will accept the transferred credits. I hope this helps you.